Family Hit and Run!!

“God gives us the Free will to Give and to Receive”

Dear Friends,

I request you to take the time to sit with this tender and important message. It was not easy to write by any means. Let's just say Brooke has felt less than eager to open up about their situation and allow any kind of support.

If you know her, you know that she's a pillar in our online community and a strong one, and she deeply values integrity and providing for others. So you can understand it's no small thing for her to allow me to write this message and reveal that their family is in need.

As you may have heard, this family is in immediate need of transportation for their basic needs.

Below I will share their recent story, their journey to recovery, and ways that we can support their situation.

Their Story

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As my husband was turning onto our rural gravel road after getting groceries from the next town, he was traumatically hit by a big, high-raised Texas truck with a steel front rack. He couldn’t control the spinning of our van and popped through a ditch and back up smashing him into a barbed wire fence and shattering the driver’s window and the windshield. The truck sped off during the accident and left him alone and grieving in the dark, alone, on the side of the road..

At home, I paced aimlessly after farm chores and put our four anxious children to bed. Dad had NEVER come home after bedtime.

My intuition became a dark reality when he called me from an EMS phone to tell me he had been in a hit-and-run accident and he was being assessed by EMTs. He said he declined hospital care because he didn’t think he was seriously injured and didn’t know how our family would be able to visit- or pick him up!

He ended the call: “I’m so sorry, our van is destroyed. I have to go because the EMTs are leaving. I don’t know when I’ll be able to call again but the Sheriff is almost here.”

Up late without Dad in her routine, our 18-month-old toddled around the kitchen asking, “Where Daddy go?!” and looking for clues, as if he was hiding. Our preschooler tossed and turned asking when Dad would get home. My son stared at the ceiling in the dark and my oldest daughter spoke out affirmations with me and prayed for her Dad and that our van was drivable, after hearing me wail in polarity about how blessed we are that Dad is okay intercepted by grieving repetitions from me that I had worked so hard- for so long- for our van.

After a few hours of handling towing and reporting the truck to the police, a Sheriff drove him home but dropped him at the driveway and he walked the rest of the way. He wasn’t thinking clearly enough to tell the man his driveway was a mile long and he was in pain.

Exhausted, he walked through the bedroom door where I was piled under a few of our kids that had fallen asleep concerned, scared or confused while waiting on Dad. He sat down silently, let his breath out, and started sobbing like I had never witnessed before. The grief he had for our one family possession we had worked so hard for was gone- and he felt at fault.

It didn’t matter how I spoke reassurance. He was feeling the impact and responsibility rightfully belonging to the swerving man in the truck that left the security of our family- Dad and van- on the side of the road, fearing for his life and tangled in barbed wire.

The next morning, we mustered one phone call to insurance to deal with the reality- but quickly set reality back to rest for the weekend after news that stole my breath and shifted the guilt into my own gut.

Last month was harder to get online clients than most- during the launch of Spring on the farm too- and we couldn’t pay our insurance within the grace period in March, so our auto insurance lapsed for three weeks and the van was not covered. I was frozen in fear of how to feed my family without a car.

Through rotations of baths, tea, bandages, pain medicine and tears, we moved through the weekend emotionally frozen, without a solution...just feeling the hard truths we were facing. The only thing we had worth any money was our reliable van.

After years of low-income living, self-healed chronic illness with bed-bound Lyme disease during pregnancy, seven lay-offs in construction and oil management, and flipping our life upside down for me to run natural health services for families online while my Veteran husband work trades on a farm we live on, we purchased this gently used, 2016 Honda Odyssey.

We have always avoided debt, managed hardships on our own, and lived within our means. We don’t have the credit or a down payment saved. This was no ordinary family van. It was the only thing we had. Despite all we had been through, we saved $23,000 for this van for years and paid in cash. It’s the only asset to our name.

We have nothing to sell to fund a van- or even a down payment- and we don’t have high credit cards that will cover this immediate need.

We are traumatized by this situation and hurting with our children as they wonder how we will get groceries or see their friends on home-school days. We do not have family or friends nearby and there are no deliveries where we are on new, raw farmland that doesn’t even have a mailbox registered yet for groceries shipped to our home. We have no way to get to the grocery store and have arranged for the landlord to help deliver groceries to us next week, but he lives nearly two hours away. We need to be able to buy feed for our chickens, get summer clothes for our kids, and haul materials for the farm.

How you can Support:

Donations to this fund go to;

A temporary rental van and/or a new van + taxes/registration/insurance

New car seats,

Court costs for “Failure to Control Vehicle,” because it was a hit and run and the truck fled the scene…

And to offer our family security and support we don’t have without you by replacing our van and the years ahead that we had with it.

These are our basic, immediate needs.

If you can sit with God for a moment and just affirm the plans ahead of us be laid out with ease, peace and that our cup be refilled through this untimely and unexpected situation, with peace and health for mind, body and spirit-- we value your care, prayer, and support.

We appreciate you dearly for opening your heart to listen to their story and donate to this family.

May God continue to Bless you along your Journey.

With Love,

Sarah